Soviets Get Huffy Over Brushoff Tass Says U.s. Spreads Lies On Missile Count

April 9, 1985|By Los Angeles Times

MOSCOW — The Kremlin reacted angrily Monday to President Reagan's fast brushoff of its seven-month moratorium on deployment of medium-range missiles aimed at Western Europe.

A military commentator for Tass, the official news agency, charged that a White House claim of massive Soviet superiority in this category of missiles was a ''gross lie.''

The quick accusation by Vladimir Chernyshov, military affairs

specialist for Tass, indicated how seriously the new ''peace offensive'' by Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was viewed by the Communist Party's propagandists.

It was seen by Western diplomats as the start of a determined effort by Gorbachev to drive a wedge between the United States and its European allies over the issue of ''Euromissile'' deployment.

Gorbachev's remarks in an interview in Pravda, the Communist Party publication, pictured him as ready for summit dialogue but still sharply critical of Reagan's military policies.

However, the swift American dismissal of his self-imposed moratorium on basing of SS-20 medium-range missiles obviously irritated the Soviet hierarchy.

A White House spokesman said the Soviet Union already has more than 400 missiles, with three warheads each, in place and targeted on Western Europe, compared with 134 single-warhead American Pershing 2 and cruise missiles in the NATO force.

At the same time, Gorbachev committed himself publicly to a summit meeting with Reagan, revealing to the Soviet people for the first time that a conference with the American president was being considered. But Gorbachev made no commitment on a time or place for the session.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Tip O'Neill, leader of a visiting delegation of congressmen, said he welcomed the apparent agreement on a Reagan-Gorbachev meeting.

O'Neill, accompanied by 12 other House members, has said he expects to meet Gorbachev, probably Wednesday, before the delegation departs for Leningrad.

In his Tass article, Chernyshov said the American response compared Soviet missiles only with U.S. ground-based missiles, and did not count British and French missiles or those launched from submarines.

''It is an unobjective view, to put it mildly, or a gross lie, to put it straightly,'' he wrote.

The Tass commentator charged that Washington had ''hastily dismissed the USSR's new peace initiatives.''

The Netherlands is the only NATO member that has not decided to deploy American missiles. It is scheduled to make up its mind by Nov. 1 on siting of 48 missiles. The Dutch government has said it will install the missiles if the Soviet Union has more than 368 medium-range missiles deployed at that time. NATO officials have said the Soviets now have more than 400.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher dismissed the Soviet moratorium as unacceptable, saying it would freeze Moscow's enormous superiority in place.

Thatcher said Gorbachev's move ''does not alter the position in any way.'' ''The consequences of such a freeze would not be balance, which is what we seek, but enormous Soviet superiority,'' she said. ''That of course would be unacceptable.''